Badger brushes. Too bad. This morning I brought out one of my favorite brushes, the Erskine that I had refitted with a large silvertip badger knot a few years back. The cream was XPEC. I always build my lather on my face, my chosen favorite method after several years of building the lather (soap or cream) in a separate lather bowl or scuttle. The beautiful silvertip packed full with lather forced me to squeeze the badger hair in order to get the lather out so I could apply it to my face before shaving. That was annoying. Tomorrow morning I'll go with the Monster synthetic brush from RazoRock. The results will be of interest.

Gary, since I started collecting synthetic brushes, I haven't looked back at my badgers.
I find synthetics to be more softer on the face as well as maintaining very good backbone.
They also don't 'hog' the lather like badgers do.

Bruno

"Shhhhhaving cream, be nice and clean
shave every day and you'll always look keen."

Interesting. I've never had to squeeze to get lather out of the brush. I would agree badger brushes build and hold a lot of lather; just I don't have trouble getting that lather on my face.

With two synthetic brushes I have I do have to drizzle water on the brush for the second pass because the lather is drying out. I'm not generalizing because so far my experience here is with just the two brushes and I'm sure synthetic fiber is improving all the time. But I definitely don't have this issue with any of my badger brushes.

In fairness I have to say I have a couple of badgers with shorter loft (in the 55mm range) that seem to give up the lather easily. The larger and maybe more densely packed badgers ( >59 mm ) seem to be more inclined to just sit there all bloated and fat and keeping their lovely lather all to themselves.

My badger brushes do seem to withhold a bit more of the lather, but that really hasn't been an issue for me. I load the brush until it is full, at which point there is no difficulty accessing the lather. After the shave, I squeeze the remaining lather out of the brush back onto the cake of soap, and I have found that ALL of my brushes - badger, boar, and synthetic - yield a goodly amount of lather at the end.

(Note that my badger and boar brushes are all on the smaller side, having a 22mm knot, or thereabouts, and moderate density, so they wouldn't hog lather as much as larger, denser knots.)